Enthusiasms and expostulations, by Glenn Kenny

June 30, 2011

The current cinema, liking things edition

"I don't know what the hell's wrong with me lately," I confided to my colleague Andrew O'Hehir the other night as we trudged from a screening of Larry Crowne to a screening of Transformers: Dark of the Moon. (I drop the name in the interest of authenticity, and perhaps in fomenting the belief that yes, it IS all a media conspiracy.) "Maybe I'm getting beaten down by summer movies, but I'm starting to LIKE stuff. As in, you know, I actually liked THAT. Or maybe it's that I liked THEM. I dunno."

But I still insist that there is pleasure to be had from the film that could also be titled Tom Hanks' Character's Adventures In A Post-Racial American Unemployment Wonderland, or something, as you will glean from my review for MSN Movies. A lot of that has to do with the two leads (the other is my fellow Soderbergh alum Julia Roberts), who in less than 48 hours or so will be chastised by the likes of the usual suspects for an inability to put "butts" in "seats." Whatever, I still like 'em, so sue me. One topic of interest I wasn't able to fully get into is Gugu Mbatha Raw's disarming and unusual variant on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl role and how the completely inappropriate romantic "potential" between her character and the title character is thwarted with dispatch and made into a comic leitmotif. Discuss, if you'd like.

Dear god how I hated LARRY CROWNE. Tonally all over the place -- a supposedly serious scene of Larry getting fired "undercut" by some weirdly broad Rob Riggle shtick that turns it into a lame SNL sketch, classroom scenes that veer drunkenly between earnest and faux-goofy -- with a romance that never starts but then somehow becomes the film's entire raison d'etre. Oh, and every potential dramatic obstacle either immediately resolved or entirely forgotten. I loved it when Hanks said something at the end about how Julia's class changed his life, and the woman sitting next to me (a total stranger) turned to me and said, "Wait, what did she actually DO?"

I love Hanks as an actor, but wow is this movie a perfect storm of incompetence -- his flaccid direction coupled with Vardalos's unspeakable plotting and dialogue, and punctuated with random bits of transparent movie insight into The Way We Live Now. Wow. I didn't like THAT THING YOU DO either, but that's practically THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER compared to this.

I did like George Takei, though, if only because his beyond-strange performance worked with the film's wild, uncontrolled swerves in tone.

And I should add, Glenn, that I was in a GREAT mood when I sat down to consume this particular shit sandwich. No joke.

So Hanks' romantic interest in LARRY CROWNE is Julia Roberts, which just reminds me that apparently Hollywood thinks that none of Hanks' romantic interests from SPLASH to CASTAWAY is worthy of appearing in films today.

Ya know, I often find both Hanks and Roberts quite insufferable (and don't get me started on the lack of fresh writing from that Big Fat Stoopid Greek Wedding harpie!) and yes, the film does gladhand its audience much too much, but ya know what - I kinda liked the damned thing. There, go ahead and bash. Bring it on people.